Clearly, different eras call for different skills: Kids are now learning about HTML before their ABCs.
More and more computer programming classes are popping up in elementary and middle schools across the country, and now even kindergarteners are learning how to code.
Researchers have developed ScratchJr, a free, open source iPad app that teaches coding basics for kids as young as five.
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“When many people think of computer programming, they think of something very sophisticated,” co-developer Mitchel Resnick of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells the Associated Press. “But we don’t think it has to be that way.”
ScratchJr (which is a simplified version of the popular programming platform Scratch) allows kids to string coding blocks together in order to make animated characters move, jump, as well as change their size or color, the AP says. The app also lets users add voices and sounds and photos, which means kids can create their own digital storyboards.
While teaching coding to children who might not even know how to read yet sounds a little strange, the idea is to expose kids to computer programming early on so they don’t become intimidated by it as they grow up.
“We don’t want necessarily every young child to become a computer scientist or to work as an engineer, but we want every young child to be exposed to these new ways of thinking that coding makes possible,” says fellow ScratchJr developer Marina Umaschi Bers of Tufts University.
ALSO: Reading, Writing…and Coding? This Teen Works to Improve Digital Education in High Schools
With the boom of tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple, as well as the proliferation of cell phones, tablets and laptops, encouraging younger generations to code not only helps them better understand the world they live in, but allows them to tinker with it and maybe even improve upon it, too.
ScratchJr received $1.3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation. The app is currently available for the iPad, but an Android and Web-compatible version is being developed.
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Tag: computer programming
Reading, Writing…and Coding? This Teen Works to Improve Digital Education in High Schools
“Programming” isn’t just for lingo for computer geeks anymore. Just look at the boom of Silicon Valley companies like Facebook and Google. With cell phones, tablets, and laptops being such a vital part of our daily lives, encouraging younger generations to code not only helps them better understand the world they live in, but allows them to tinker with it and maybe even improve upon it, too.
One bright teen mind, 16-year-old Zach Latta, is helping youngsters get more involved with the digital age with his new start-up hackEDU. Through it, he’s enabling high schoolers around the country to start and lead their own computer programming clubs at school. Participating students are learning how to program games, websites, and other projects.
In an interview with The Official Jamby Blog, the ambitious young man said his nonprofit is currently in the pilot phase with seven clubs around the country.
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Once the nonprofit is fully launched, the material will be open-source — meaning that it’s free and allows users to build upon the material. Latta says by next semester, hackEDU will be launched in 50 schools around the world.
What Latta is doing is actually very important. Despite the growing demand of computer programmers in the job sector, computer science classes are usually considered electives and not commonly taught alongside core school subjects like math or English. As we previously reported, while there’s a hard push to mainstream basic coding in schools, we might not see it for another few years and only in select states.
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That’s why initiatives like hackEDU’s are necessary. Programming clubs might be the only way some kids are exposed to the topic in school. And if we want to find the next generation of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, shouldn’t we bring computer science, in any shape or form, to as many schools as possible?
Chicago Schools Just Made This Tech-Savvy Move. The Rest of the Country Is Next
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are making a serious investment in the future of its students by adding computer science to its high school core curriculum, and offering it starting in kindergarten — the first urban school district to do so. CPS high schools will begin including a foundational computer science class within three years, upgrading the subject from elective to core; within five years, kindergarten through eighth-graders will be able to take computer courses as well. The goal is to increase kids’ computer literacy and get them coding at a young age, so they can compete for high-paying jobs. Anyone who’s been paying attention to education trends lately knows that globally American kids have fallen behind in the S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. “The new bilingual is knowing computer code writing, and what we’re setting up today, while it’s a good foundation, the fact is that in the U.K. and in China, computer science and computer coding is now fundamental to elementary school education, and we’re playing catch-up to that effort,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
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